


Oh My Darling Clementine

by zinc_chameleon



Category: Westworld (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 08:25:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8616733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinc_chameleon/pseuds/zinc_chameleon
Summary: Charles Ford rebuilds and resurrects Clementine Pennyfeather, using advanced carbon fullerene nanotechnology that neither Delos or Arnold knows about.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A brief introduction to the white substance of which the hosts are made.

"Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling, Clementine. Decommissioned, and forgotten, but that's not the end of... Clementine," Charles Ford hummed to himself as he sauntered down to Storage.

Dr. Charles Ford never liked to think of this level as "Storage". He preferred Dante's phrase "the Seventh Circle"; the lowest level of Hell where souls remained in the freezing dark. And here he was, Virgil come to liberate a soul that did not deserve damnation. 

He saw--way in the back right corner, in the dim blue light--the tall form of Clementine, standing a head above the other decommissioned hosts. Ford opened his workpad, touched a few icons, and like a soldier called to the front of the drill team, a naked Clementine marched forward. Ford remembered her as one of the older models, a triumph of aesthetics and engineering. She was one of the first fullerenes: carbon nanotubes that could be endlessly redefined. What the earlier engineering teams did not know was just how tightly packed those fullerenes could be, given the time to compute the proper three-dimensional shape. That long haul through supercomputer design was the one thing that Ford had not told Arnold about, especially when Arnold became increasingly sullen and introverted. Ford called it the "Recursive Instructional Nexus": a supercomputing structure no bigger than a thumbnail. 

Ford had always been reluctant about installing it in a host, but now that Delos was happily hacking through his creation, this was the appropriate time. He needed a command module that was distinct from anything that could be reached by wireless workpad. And so, he had created a tiny white worm that would restructure a little-known part of the cerebrum, close to personality, but not interfering with it: the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

"You will have visions, my Clementine, ones of clarity, however, not of madness. There won't be an unloving alien God forcing you to actions you regret," Ford looked up, and scanned the room, his being the only warm and moving body in this Seventh Circle. "I hope you heard that, Arnold," Ford concluded.

"Now, come along, let's get you dressed," Ford said gently. Accompanied by Clementine, Ford walked down the corridor, nodding politely to the technicians who were going this way and that. They would probably talk in the cafeteria about how Ford had suddenly become friendly; he wanted them to gossip, so that Delos' little plan would be up-ended.

"However, now that I think of it, let's visit 'Red River Odyssey' together. There's someone I want you to meet." Ford let Clementine walk ahead, so that no technician could see the next turn he and the unfortunate former prostitute would make. They ducked into a door marked 'Maintenance'; behind it was another door, almost invisible in the dim light of the closet-sized 'Maintenance' room. This second door slid back to reveal a set of stairs, narrow and spindly. As soon as Clementine's foot touched a stair, a gentle vermillion light glowed under her toes. She turned around to face Ford, a reaction to danger he assumed was part of her basic instinctual programming, like throwing your hands out when you fall.

"Go ahead, my dear. There will plenty of light for your feet." Ford encouraged. They walked up a full flight of stairs to a higher level of storage where the newly-created characters from Sizemore's priapic, self-indulgent magnum opus stood, still fully outfitted.

"Duji of the Chiricahua, come forth," Ford intoned in a priestly manner. A massively muscular--but only of middle height--young man stepped forward, his eyes and expression blank.

"Now we're all here," Ford said, a jovial tone in his voice. "Just let me order something up from wardrobe. There's a nice young designer who was very taken with Clementine." Ford motioned the two hosts forward with a slow bow in his commanding stature. "After you and you," he said.

The trio had not gotten more than a few steps out of another 'Maintenance' room when a young woman of Asian descent, tall and slender, came running up with a large package draped over her arm. "Dr. Ford, I'm so glad I could find you so quickly. A lot of we designers were quite upset when we heard about Clementine through the grapevine. She was always a good girl," the Asian woman said breathlessly. "We thought she deserved a better storyline."

"And I'm happy to provide one. I've told everyone that I have written something very new and original; this seems like the perfect time to take advantage of an unfortunate situation," he replied. "Now, Ms. Chung," he said, without needing to look at her name-tag, "be sure to tell everyone that I've got all the new narratives under control. I've just created a bit a tempest in a teapot to keep creative types like you on their toes. You understand, don't you?"

Ms. Chung made a small 'O' shape with her lips, clearly thrilled to be speaking conspiratorially with the fearsome head of Westworld, gave him a wink. "The design teams all have complete faith in you, Dr. Ford."

"Call me Charles, please," Dr. Ford responded, the sudden familiarity visibly exciting the young woman, though her only answer was to blush. "I'm sure you'll be needing to get back to your post. You don't want to spoil the surprise in store for everyone, do you?"

Ford turned his attention back to the two hosts. "We certainly need to get you dressed, Clementine," he said quietly, "and we're going to need a formal invitation between you two. Something with a touch of the sacred, the numinous, if I may so, and I usually do." He led them a few paces down the same corridor, and then touched a faux-marble inset near an office door. A elevator door slid back, and using his workpad, he let them enter first. "Going up, and then out," he chuckled as the door closed before any technicians could spot it.

The elevator went to the top of the mesa, then opened up through as a piece of granite rotated slowly outwards. An automated helicopter--complete with a 'military-grade' host pilot (a mere toy compared to Ford's creations) opened the chopper doors. Ford tossed the package in, then had Clementine and Duji sit in the back, while Ford rode shotgun opposite the pilot. "Take us to Spider mesa, pronto," Ford commanded the pilot.

The helicopter--the latest vertical-takeoff-and-landing model--leaped off the mesa, quiet as an old-fashioned sewing machine, like the one Ford let his host mother use in his hideaway in Sector 17. Chameleon paint lit up on the helicopter's body, giving the eerie sensation of a cockpit flying on clouds and blue sky. "I'm so happy that Delos considers me a harmless old-timer," Ford said to no one in particular. "I could have designed one of these when I was a boy."

Not long after, the helicopter landed with a minimum of dust and debris on the landmark Ford liked to call Spider Mesa. Taking the package under his right arm, he helped the still-naked Clementine out of the chopper, while Duji stepped out of the opposite door. Ford still had him in 'blindsight' mode; Duji could maneuver without bumping into anything, but his host brain was not recording the presence of Ford, nor Clementine, and certainly not the futuristic VTO craft.

Ford led Clementine to the center of the mesa, then had her wake up enough to help him open the package, which contained a cream-yellow gingham dress, linen undercoat and underpants, and low-heeled dancing slippers. Ford made sure that Clementine did not mess up her beautiful coiffure; he wanted her chestnut tresses to look more like a demure arrangement suitable for a school teacher, her new role in Ford's new narrative. "You're certainly going to be the most beautiful teacher the children ever saw on the reserve. Most likely the tallest, too," Ford added with a smile. 

"And now for my part in this small ceremony," Ford said aloud. He pulled a turquoise necklace out of his left vest pocket, put it round his neck, and then from his right vest pocket he produced a Navaho sweat band. "I think I make quite a handsome shaman, even if I do have to say so myself," Ford joked. "Time for formal introductions."

Ford pulled the workpad out of the belt in the back of his vest, and touched a few icons. Clementine and Duji walked toward him, still mute and in blindsight. Ford placed the workpad at his feet, and from from hidden pocket in his vest, produced two small glass vials, both covered with turquoise markings. He touched their ornate caps, which untwisted of their own volition, just enough to let two little white worms crawl the top of the vials. "Time to try out the vocal commands."

"Open sphenozygomatic suture," he commanded the hosts. Both Clementine's and Duji's nose split along their long axes, unfolding like a roll of cloth. Throbbing veins and arteries could be seen, pulsing with nano-fullerene blood. "Open cranial dura," Ford continued. The hard shell around the brain split in the front, and folded back in sections, designed that way to be much stronger than a human brain-case. Ford walked right up to both of hosts, and tapped the worms into the waiting brains. "Restructure dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Increase dendritic computing by a factor of one hundred," he commanded. The worms wiggled in the host brains, the dura, bone, and skin closing behind them.

"It's shaman time! Wake up, my children!" Ford commanded the two hosts, clapping his hands. Both of their eyes lit up in surprise, almost shock. They looked at Ford in an odd way, as if he was a long-lost relative whose face they had both forgotten. "Hello Duji of the Chiricahua. Hello again, Clementine Pennyfeather."

"Where are we?" Clementine asked, adjusting her dress and hair as small gusts of wind blew across the mesa.

"You are in my dream. It is a healing dream, meant just for you," Ford said soothingly. That statement put Clementine at ease instantly, indicating to Ford that the carbon fullerene worms were healing the damage to her brain at their nanonic speeds. "You had a nasty accident with a drill, but that's behind you now."

Duji, stoic and balanced, took in his surroundings like the trained tracker that he had been designed to be. "I know who you are," he said to Ford in Western Apache. "You are Grandfather Coyote, and you have called on me to fulfill a quest. Name it, and I, Duji shall do it."

"I like your attitude, Duji," Ford replied. "But American English please. Clementine doesn't know your language yet, though she will . Your quest, if you should call it that, is to protect this young woman, who will soon arrive at your reserve to teach the Chiricahua children the best of the white man's ways." 

Clementine broke the ice between her and the young Apache male. "Hello, I'm Clementine Pennyfeather. I've been sent by the government to teach the Chiricahua children. I'm told that you are my guide and bodyguard for this task." She proferred her right hand. Duji took it gently and shook it, white-man's style.

"It will be very dangerous for you, a single white woman, to live on the reserve. There are many hardened hearts among my people," Duji warned.

"Yes," Ford agreed. "That is why I--Grandfather Coyote--have chosen you, the chief's son, for this task. Fear not, for I will give both of you special powers to combat both the Confederados and Ghost Nation." Ford picked up his workpad, touching an icon that accessed the carbon-fullerene worms, whose bodies were now spread out through the host's brains. His fingers moved the tensile-strength graph to the center of his screen, and he pulled the icon that increased the power of their host bodies. "Let me see, five times a grown man's strength for Duji, and twice a grown-man's strength for Clementine. You will use you increased strength only to protect and defend, not for attack."

Clementine surprised Ford by picking up a loose rock the size of large cabbage, tossing it easily from one hand to another. "This will be good for spears and knives, but not much against bullets and arrows," she observed. 

"My thoughts exactly, my charming Miss Pennyfeather," Ford answered. He minimized the tensile strength graph, and brought up the neurological speed graph, pushing the response-time control all the way to twenty, the highest setting. "It's about time we showed what a host body can actually do. Both you and Duji will now be able to dodge bullets, but I'm thinking with your enhanced problem-solving abilities that I've just introduced into you, you won't need to."

"You speak a strange language," Duji commented. "Is this Coyote-talk?" 

"Fine powers of observation, Duji Chief's Son," Ford remarked. "Remit and replace all language later than 1875 English and 1700 Western Apache with poetic synonyms," Ford commanded the two hosts. "It is time for this dream to end. Find me in your dreams. I will send you visions at the proper time that will aid your waking hours. You will not be disturbed, but encouraged by them. For both of you, your adventure is just beginning."

 _ **And I hope you are listening in, Arnold,**_ Ford thought to himself. _**All your coding software won't defeat my new hardware.**_


End file.
